One of the days during my stay in California with my buddy Adarsh, we decided to drive down to Big Sur beach to see sunset and shoot some photos at the Pfeiffer beach. I had certain video clips that i had in my mind which i wanted to shoot from this location so had asked Adarsh to stop over at any good view point where i can see water hitting the rocks below the cliff. Some minor road works and a bit of traffic meant that we reached the area just when the sun decided to go below the horizon. In one of the few places where we stopped over for shooting some photos/videos, i noticed a girl sitting on a cliff alone and looking towards the sunset. The place where i was shooting was just few meters away from where she was sitting. At one end i usually don’t get distracted whilst shooting and at other end i was wondering what would make someone come to such place alone and sit and watch sunset. She left the place after the sun totally set but i continued sitting there pondering on so many things – everything from emotions, life, sentiments, relations and much more. All that i could hear while i was shooting was the sound of the waves hitting the rocks. One of the key things which i always look forward to when i go out to shoot is trying to make atleast a handful images which tries to convey one or the other emotions of human life. It can be sorrow, loneliness, difference of opinion, solitude ( apparently these are my fav themes ). This day my mind was craving to capture something which conveys what my mind is thinking of what might be going on in the girls head. When i was looking through the viewfinder i could see these splash of bright orange which is fading away and following the sun. My instincts made me shoot quite a lot of combinations of frames in various orientations and setups, but when I came back to hotel at night and saw the image again i knew what i got was what i was trying to convey – a frame which communicates a slow disappearance of colorful bright light, a light which is slowly getting engufed by darkness, a light which is not perturbed by the ripples in the ocean below it – a light which we otherwise call it LIFE !
I posted this image in a forum where i co-administrate and i got various reply – some say it depicts “music” and some say its “peace” but what grabbed my attention most was this one from my good friend Nirlep who went on to compare my image to that of a world’s costliest photograph by Andreas Gursky. I really liked the way he related the two images.
The article accompanying Andreas picture says that it presents our relationship with nature..a featureless colorless nature amidst human elements. I did look at the picture for quite some time and felt the sadness flute through me. Then I switched to Shiva’s post which is constructionally similar to Andeas. The similarity ends at that. From here one may move either side. We may take Andreas picture as culmination of modernity which results in a featureless scape or we may move from there to Shiva’s view which happens later in time than Andreas’s depiction. From Andreas to Shiva there could be a movement of nature reclaiming human elements leaving the canvas with just natural elements. The rich color in Shiva’s picture could be thought of as a remnant of industry which too would fade out in time. These pictures combined have had me spell bound.